


This Ain't the Summer of Love

by someplacelikebolivia



Category: Supernatural, The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester UST, Crossover, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, extreme overuse of jeremy bearimy, rating is for language, so i'm not warning for major character death, they're all dead already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27864246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someplacelikebolivia/pseuds/someplacelikebolivia
Summary: “Lady, what the hell is going on here,” he growled.“Not a lady,” she said, still beaming at him. “And not the hell. You, Dean Winchester, are in the Good Place.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	This Ain't the Summer of Love

“Hi there!”

The perky voice came from directly over Dean’s shoulder where he _knew_ no one had been standing a second before. He whirled around toward the voice, his hand reaching fruitlessly toward a gun that wasn’t there.

“Lady, what the hell is going on here,” he growled.

“Not a lady,” she said, still beaming at him. “And not the hell. You, Dean Winchester, are in the Good Place.”

She went on, but it took him more time than Dean would ever admit to process what he was hearing. Janet ( _Janet?_ he mouthed silently) introduced herself, and explained that because he, Dean Winchester, had been a good person (he scoffed) on Earth, he was now facing an eternity of what, milk and honey, choirs of angels? He’d had enough of angels when he was alive, they were dicks, all of them.

Except.

Janet was still talking. “Not necessarily an eternity. Only as long as you feel like you need to be here. Some people wait for their loved ones to arrive. Some people realize they’re ready to go through the door as soon as they get here. It’s really up to you.”

“So what, this is heaven? Lady, I’ve been to heaven, and it was not like this.” There were no white corridors, no light so blinding that it drove away every shadow. All there was, was sunlight. Green plants, a lake in the distance. From far away, Dean could hear voices, raised in joy.

“Not a lady,” she corrected him again, which, fair. “And you can choose to think of the Good Place as heaven, or as anything you find suits you best. The heaven you visited was one of many that existed before the reform. You’ll find that a lot of things have changed about the afterlife since you were last here, Dean.” She frowned slightly. “Since the last several times you were here, actually.”

“Yeah, well, been around the block a few times. I told Sammy to let this one stick, though, so I better not be waking up in a pinewood box any time soon.”

Dean remembered the look on Sam’s face, the fear and anger that he had felt in himself so many times before. The helplessness. He didn’t know why, but going out like that, dying bloody, dying with his boots on, it felt right. It was the best death that he had ever hoped for. Not for Sam, though. Sam deserved better, deserved a life, a family, the white picket fence and all that crap.

Dean’s job was done, and he could only hope that Sam would be able to move on and make a life for himself without his deadbeat older brother hanging around.

“Anything you’d like to do, Dean? These green doors can take you anywhere, to any time, or provide anything you can wish for.” Janet made a slight gesture and a door appeared out of nowhere. Dean startled before he could help himself, and remembered how Cas’ sudden arrivals used to make him jump. _Dammit, Cas._

“How am I supposed to know what to wish for? Any crazy idea that just comes into my head, that door will make it appear?”

Janet nodded. “It will. Some folks prefer to let the doors surprise them, as well.” She nodded significantly toward the door, and Dean rolled his eyes. Fine, he could indulge the la—Janet, then maybe she’d leave him alone.

When the door swung open, there she was. Dean couldn’t help the smile that came to his face at seeing his baby, and he ran his hands over the car’s frame. Who’d have thought cars could go to heaven? He popped the driver’s side door open and settled in. She smelled just the same, the seat creaked under him in just the right way, and the mirrors were already set just how he wanted them.

He turned the key and the Impala rumbled to life. Where before he had seen only a grassy field in front of the car, now there was a road, a two-lane blacktop that stretched as far as he could see.

“Uh, Janet?” he asked hesitantly.

“Hi there!” she said, from much closer than she had any right to be.

“Where the hell does this road go?” he asked.

“I know everything there is to know, Dean, but I can’t tell you where that road will take you. I can tell you that just down that way, you might come across some old friends.” A bubbly sound effect, and she was gone.

Dean had gotten used to angels popping in and out with the rushing of air through invisible wings, he supposed he could get used to this as well. Under the hood, Baby’s engine hummed, ready to haul ass in whatever direction he pointed her. Dean drove.

* * *

_Several bearimys later_

He wiped the condensation from the beer bottle onto the leg of his jeans, and swung around in the barstool to face the corner.

“Hey Ash! Get some real tunes going on that thing, wouldja?” Dean gestured toward the jukebox. “Play some Zepp, or something, man.”

“I don’t control the jukebox, Dean.” Ash barely looked up from his keyboard. What he spent his time doing on there, Dean didn’t know, and if this heaven had some equivalent of the dark web, he was not interested in finding out.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to find the Roadhouse waiting for him, but seeing Ellen and Jo, and even freakin’ _Ash_ for the first time in so damn long had felt... _No chick-flick moments_ some back corner of Dean’s mind growled, but he dismissed it. He was dead, he could have as many goddamn chick-flick moments as he wanted. It had felt like a piece of him that had been missing for near a decade had suddenly reappeared.

Dean hadn’t known how many pieces of his heart had been missing until they started to be filled back in.

A ways down the highway from the Roadhouse, Dean had found Bobby. Not apocalypse world Bobby, although he had to be around here somewhere, but _his_ Bobby. Closest-thing-he-had-to-a-father _Bobby_ . For a while, Dean had thought he’d never leave. Bobby’s junkyard, his house, it was all there. Dean could set out in the morning and trawl through the cars until he came across _exactly_ the part he and Bobby had needed the day before, fixing up one of the junkers just for kicks. A day spent covered in grease, half under the car, half bent over the engine, finished off with an ice cold beer on the porch was as close to his idea of paradise as Dean had ever bothered to imagine.

Bobby didn’t seem surprised, though, when Dean started to get restless. “You got other places to go, boy. Plenty left to see up here. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, not yet.”

When Dean got back on the highway, he didn’t have a destination in mind, but the road seemed to have its own ideas of where it was taking him. Some days he’d wind up at a roadside motel, always the kind with Magic FingersTM and never the kind with bedbugs or sheets with stains no bleach could remove.

Some days, the highway would take him somewhere new. A pie festival, a cookout, a freakin’ Metallica concert. Those guys weren’t even dead, but Dean decided he didn’t need to waste time questioning that logic in heaven.

Wherever the road took him, Dean saw familiar faces along the way. Pastor Jim enjoying pancakes at a roadside diner, Victor Henriksen strolling down the sidewalk in the sun, Donna giving him a cheery wave over a picnic table, surrounded by friends.

And there were more. He had never been sure of their real names, but he’d never forgotten the faces of the women who had been Meg, and Ruby, and Lilith. Seeing those faces happy and untroubled, not tight with anger or pain, it loosened something in his chest. Something had been wound so tight for so long that the absence of it was like a phantom pain. All the accumulated suffering, even second-hand, had left a mark. And now that mark was being erased.

Dean didn’t know how many days or weeks he had been on the road by the time the highway took him home to Lawrence. The house was just like he remembered it, as much as the memory of a four year old kid could be relied upon. He rang the doorbell, and stood back. She had to be there, right? No heaven of Dean’s could be complete without her. And if hugging Mary Campbell again felt like the last thing Dean needed to do, he guessed he could put up with seeing that old bastard John Winchester for a bit as well.

* * *

_Several more bearimys later_

Dean didn’t know how he knew, or what quiet voice compelled him to drive to the bridge, but he knew that if he did, Sammy would be there. And he was. It felt like an eternity and no time at all had passed since he had seen his brother, and he could tell that Sam felt the same.

No one could spend eternity on a bridge though, no matter how scenic the forest or the river. Dean bullied Sam into the Impala’s passenger seat with a promise, or a threat, to give him the nickel tour of the whole place. It turned out that a hell of a lot of Sam’s idea of heaven overlapped with Dean’s, although the offerings at the diners they stopped at got a lot less greasy when Sam walked in.

Time slid by under Baby’s tires, and one day, Sam left. Not _left_ left, he promised he wouldn’t without saying goodbye, but there were things Sam needed to do that weren’t on Dean’s list, and vice versa, he supposed. Seeing the huge green door swing shut behind Sam and vanish like it had never been there seemed like it should have hurt, but it didn’t. Dean would see him again. 

* * *

_Many more bearimys later_

“You really gotta shove pie in my face _again_ , dude? It wasn’t bad enough to do it on the _literal day I died_ , you gotta do it heaven too?” Dean scowled, swiping whipped cream and pie crumbs off his face with the back of his hand.

Sam only snickered. “Once was never going to be enough, Dean.”

“And way to waste a freakin’ pie, Sammy. That took me all morning to make!”

“It did take him all morning,” Eileen added, coming out to join them at the table. “He got my kitchen all covered in flour, I had to ask Janet to come poof it all away. Twice.” She grinned, and slid into a chair across the table where she could keep an eye on Dean’s face and on Sam’s hands as they talked. Dean had to admit, Sam’s signing had come a long way after forty years of marriage to Eileen.

He was signing now, and she nodded along. Dean could only pick out a few words here and there. _Say. When_ . _Dean_ . _Today._

“You got something you wanna say to me?” he asked, and cracked open another bottle of beer for himself, and one for Eileen. Sam was still nursing his stupid grapefruit water, so no use wasting good beer on him.

“Dean. I—we’ve been talking. And we’re ready.”

“You’re ready.”

“To leave,” Eileen added. “We love you. And everyone else who’s still here, or who hasn’t gotten here yet. But it’s time for us to go.”

“Come on. You’re not gonna go. There’s way too much left to do. No way.” He shook his head and set his beer down on the table with a clatter, much harder than he meant to.

“That’s just it, Dean. There isn’t anything left to do. Not for us.” Sam was making those goddamned puppy dog eyes at him, and hell if Dean wasn’t still a sucker, dead or not. He was not going to cry over this. For god’s sake they were _all already dead_ , what the hell did it matter who decided to move on when?

The chair scraped as he stood up, chugging the rest of his beer and grabbing another fresh. He could get drunk in heaven if he wanted, who was gonna stop him. “I need a minute.”

Sam found him ten minutes later, leaning against the Impala, enjoying the warmth at his back as she radiated out all the heat she’d collected from the sun during the day. “I get it, Sammy. I do. You don’t gotta explain yourself to me.”

Sam sighed. “I know. But I want to. Move over, jerk,” he added, shoving at Dean’s elbow to claim his spot.

“Bitch,” Dean said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I didn’t know when this was gonna happen, and neither did Eileen. We didn’t know what we were waiting for, and to be honest I still don’t know what changed. But we woke up this morning, and it was different. We both knew. I’m sorry.”

“How can you ‘just know’, man? You know that sounds like some grade-A bullshit, right?”

Sam laughed, “Yeah, I know. Maybe it’s a younger brother’s prerogative in heaven to get to beat an older sibling for once, or maybe…” He trailed off and shook his head.

“What? What, Sam?”

“Maybe you’re still waiting for someone.” Sam looked apologetic, his stupid floppy hair covering up half his eyes in the way that made Mary tsk and try to push it back out of his face every time she saw it.

“Who the hell could I still be waiting for? I got you and Eileen here, I got Bobby, and Mom and Dad. Even _Adam_ , and I barely knew the guy! There’s nobody left on Earth I’m waiting for.”

“Somebody not on Earth then.”

“Stop it. I ain’t going there, Sam. It ain’t gonna happen, there’s no use waiting for a miracle that’s never coming.”

Sam looked like he wanted to protest, but Dean elbowed him, hard, in the side. “Quit it, Sam, I mean it,” and he fell silent.

They watched the sun set, its red and gold light filtering through the trees and sparkling off the lake in the distance. “Hey, Dean?” Sam asked finally. “Tomorrow, would you drive us?”

* * *

When Eileen and Sam walked through the door and Dean could no longer see them, all he wanted to do was follow. But when he faced the door and pushed himself to go through, he couldn’t do it. Some invisible, intangible tether held him back, kept him from the one last self-destructive tendency he had left in paradise.

Well. Janet had said he could wait on the bench as long as he wanted, until he was ready. Dean lay down, his folded jacket between his head and the wooden seat, and waited.

* * *

_Many many more bearimys later_

He didn’t know how long he’d been waiting there, but after enough time watching people enter the clearing from one side and leave it through another, never coming back the other way, he left. If waiting in one place wasn’t enough to let him end it, maybe distance would be. Dean hit the road, and he drank, and ate pie, and listened to the same five albums over and over. He ran into old friends and old enemies, and sometimes, he offered them a ride when they needed it.

It seemed kind of fitting, Dean thought. Him and Baby, helping people get through to the other side, only occasionally succumbing to the temptation to play Blue Öyster Cult while he did so.

He got to see Charlie, his real Charlie, pass through the door arm in arm with Dorothy Baum. He ran into Kevin Tran one day and gave him a ride to the door when he asked as well. One day his passenger was Jimmy goddammed Novak, and hell if that wasn’t a freakin’ kick in the teeth. There was even Becky, freakin’ _Becky_. He ferried them all when they needed it, and they thanked him, and then they left him behind.

* * *

_A truly frightening number of bearimys later, but lucky for Dean he’s lost track at this point_

“Hey Janet?”

“Hi there! What can I do for you, Dean Winchester?”

“Nothin’, I just…” he waved a hand blearily.

“Are you intoxicated?”

Dean glanced around at the empty bottles that littered the ground around the Impala. “Maybe.”

“Well, at least there are no hangovers here.” She smiled, but Dean barely noticed.

“Why am I still here, Janet? There ain’t nobody left for me to wait for. Why can’t I just be _done_?” At the last, he flung his latest empty bottle across the road and watched it shatter into pieces, then watched those pieces disappear. No trash in paradise. Then why was Dean still here, huh?

“Dean, I’m sorry you’re struggling. Is there anything I can do to help?”

If he hadn’t had so much to drink, or hadn’t made the conscious decision to let the alcohol affect him in a way that it really shouldn’t in the contradictory unreality of heaven, Dean never would have admitted it. But he had, and he did, and so, “I miss him.”

“Your brother?” Janet asked.

“No. Cas. I miss Cas, that stupid bastard,” Dean frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. “What’s the secret cheat code to sobering up in here, anyway, Janet?”

A strange feeling, as if the whole world had just gone _plib_ around him, and Dean looked up. “I didn’t say I _wanted_ to sober up, just that I wanted to know how.”

“I know everything, Dean. There is literally nothing in the universe that I do not know, and you definitely wanted to sober up. Who’s this Cas you mention?”

“Don’t you know?” he sneered, looking anywhere but directly at her.

“Yes. But I’m still asking.”

“He’s. He was. My friend. He showed up and it was like he had always been there. Making stupid-ass decisions, fucking everything up, always deciding he knew best. He always tried to make things right, even when he didn’t know how.

“He was my friend, and he pulled me out of hell, and saved my life more times than I could count, and then the stupid bastard went and _died_ before I could tell him. Fuck!” He aimed a kick at the nearest bottle, and then at the next, and the next as each one flew, and shattered, and vanished.

“What did you want to tell him?”

“Don’t make me say it, Janet. You know what I wanted to tell him.” Dean shook his head and swiped away an angry tear. “He told me right before he died, and I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t say _anything_.”

“Well, maybe he’s still trying to pass his trials, let me check in with the office and see how far along—”

“He’s not passing his trials, Janet. He wasn’t human, he didn’t get the same shake that we did. He’s just gone. The Empty took him, and it’s never giving him back.”

“The Empty,” Janet said, considering. “That sounds an awful lot like a Void to me.”

* * *

The beer bottles were all gone, Janet was gone, and Dean was alone again. Would never stop being alone again, probably. If he started the Impala, pointed her down the road, and never took his foot off the gas again, what would happen, he wondered. The road could probably go on forever, and so would he. Alone.

Dean shivered in his leather jacket, although it didn’t seem fair that he could feel cold even in heaven. The sun was setting, lighting the sky on fire as far as the eye could see, and Dean made up his mind. That’s what he’d do then, just drive until he couldn’t drive any more.

A gust of wind blew at his back, and the accompanying sound effect told him that Janet had returned. Why was she back to bother him again, he’d already made up his mind.

“Janet, couldja just leave me alone for one minute—" But it wasn’t Janet’s voice that answered him.

“Hello, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to newtonartemis for beta-ing this nonsense! Dedicated to mdf who I sincerely hope will not investigate further if she finds this on AO3.
> 
> The Blue Öyster Cult album that Dean refers to is "Agents of Fortune", which features both "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "This Ain't the Summer of Love".


End file.
